Geolocated METOC Forecast Service
Here we provide a service which lets you access METOC (meteorological
and oceanographic) forecasts for exactly the locations and times that you
are interested in. But to do that we need to know the location for which
you want the forecast.
Our users are operating in many different environments. We have therefore
chosen to make a number of different user interfaces which you can use
to access the forecasts. All of our web pages are available in both
encrypted and
plain text form. It should however be noted
that we are currently using an external service for getting the map tiles
used in our map interface (see below). This map tile service is only
available over a normal unencrypted internet connection.
Geolocated forecasts are extracted at exactly the points that you want them
for. Due to the inherent uncertainty in this type of forecasts it is
recommended to combine these forecasts with other forecasts which give a
general overview of the weather. This is especially true for weather
parameters with high spatial variability like currents and waves. See also
our disclaimer.
Map Interface
You can access the forecasts by clicking on a zoomable map (like Google
Maps). This is convenient if you want to check the weather at locations
without having to specify the exact longitude and latitude of that position.
A drawback is that it works best when you have a decent internet
connection.
Automatic Identification System Interface
If you want forecasts for a specific ship which is equipped with an
enabled Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder you can use
our AIS interface which lets you type in the ships Maritime Mobile Service
Identity (MMSI) number and we will retrieve the ships last known position
from our AIS database and provide forecasts for that position. This
interface is very useful if you have limited bandwidth.
We are currently only providing this service for the North Sea and
Baltic Seas.
Geolocation Interface
Web browsers have a feature called geolocation. We have a user interface
which requests your location from your computer.
A number of different sources are used to attempt to obtain the user’s
location, and each has their own varying degree of accuracy. A desktop
browser is likely to use WiFi (accurate to 20m) or IP Geolocation which is
only accurate to the city level and can provide false positives. Mobile
devices tend to use triangulation techniques such as GPS (accurate to 10m
and only works outside), WiFi and GSM/CDMA cell IDs (accurate to 1000m).
This interface is also useful if you have limited bandwidth.
Text Form Interface
The final interface that we support is a simple text form interface where
you simply type in the position that you want forecasts from. Useful if
your bandwidth is limited.
Web Application Programming Interface
You can include our forecast data or images on your own web site or in your own application by using our simple Web API. Images can be included on a web page using a simple <img> tag while other information can be accessed using a JSON based API. See details in our API documentation